Marukyu Koyamaen

Marukyu Koyamaen traces its founding to about 1704, when Kyujiro Koyama began growing and processing tea in Ogura, a district of Uji regarded since the medieval period as Japan's premier tea-growing area. Three hundred years on, the company still mills its own matcha on traditional stone mills, taking leaf through hand harvesting, steaming, drying and grinding before blending it across a full range of grades - from culinary matcha sold to confectioners and food manufacturers up to ceremonial grades supplied to tea schools. The Nishinotoin Tea Shop, the company's flagship in central Kyoto's Karasuma-Oike area, occupies a renovated machiya townhouse and sells the same lineup carried at the Uji base. Attached to it is Motoan, a tea house with seating toward the back and a small garden giving a glimpse of a chashitsu built for formal tea ceremony; the cafe menu runs through the house's own matcha, gyokuro and sencha, usually paired with a seasonal wagashi. Both shop and tea house close on Wednesdays and the third Tuesday of the month, a rhythm that reads less like retail hours and more like a workshop that happens to also serve tea. For a house this old, the offer stays narrow and specific: one region, one family's stone mills, and a grading system built for people who already know the difference between grades rather than a general audience.